


Survivor's Guilt

by paopu fruit (lacewoods)



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Character Study, F/M, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-08
Updated: 2014-12-08
Packaged: 2018-02-28 17:06:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2740298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lacewoods/pseuds/paopu%20fruit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Twilight Town sunset burns in colors like bruising.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Survivor's Guilt

**Author's Note:**

> A small disclaimer: this fic blatantly disregards a lot of the events from Dream Drop Distance. I would say I was sorry if there was an ounce of validity to those words. It does keep with the advent of Lea and Isa's births from the ashes of Axel and Saix, so perhaps not all is lost.

The Twilight Town sunset burns in colors like bruising.

There's the faintest hint of blue beneath a salmon orange like cat vomit, and Lea shoves gloved hands into the pockets of his jeans, strolling in beats of unstressed-stressed, the two-toned rhythm of a heart.

His destination—a shabby little ice-cream stand half-obscured in the shadow of the tower leering over Tram Common—is close approaching. It's empty, save a couple of teeny boppers munching Rocket Pops, and the internal disgust he feels at being old enough for the words _teeny boppers_ to spring up unannounced in his phrase pool makes the space behind his throat ache. He fingers the cotton lining of his pockets, digging for a few munny coins as the kids head off to Market Street.

His fingers are slick beneath the summer heat of this world, humid beneath the leather sleeve of his gloves. It makes it hard to find purchase on the slick coins, but he manages by the time the stand keeper shoots him a familiar smile with crinkly eyelids, as usual.

“The usual?”

“The usual.”

The words come out winded; plagued beneath the weight of the long uphill struggle to the clocktower base. The vendor squats down, rifling around, the moan of plastic rising from beneath the stand.

Lea's shoulders hunch lower as he waits, against the burning ache that complains when he does; muscles in various stages of atrophy twinging. He can hear Roxas, sneer thick in his head—“ _do some yoga, old man!_ ”—and smiles despite the hurt. He doesn't sleep as well these days, a fact that resonates in the lining of tendons and dense tissue, radiating in dull pangs.

“There you are, son. You enjoy, now.”

Lea smiles. He's distrustful of his voice, given the last words came out marathon thin; he salutes the old man and ambles off towards Station Heights, slower this time.

The ice cream starts to melt immediately, a green-blue that pools in the creases of his worn black gloves. He thinks he should recycle them with the other remains of fifteen years ago; the threadbare cloak gathering dust in a hat box, buried beneath mounds of old comic books at the back of his closet.

He takes them off to shower, but it feels uncomfortable. The skin of his hands is sheer white in the fluorescent light of his bathroom, with veins like gnarled purple roots; rawly sensitive fingers that feel shameful without the routine weight of leather bunched around the knuckles.

He licks at the drops, at the familiar taste of salt and sugar, feels in response a bright burst of warm saliva beneath his tongue. The blue is so bright and so clean his chest feels at once tight, stiff below skeins of lumpy flesh knotting fast in his throat. He grips the sticks tighter, thankful at once for the dry grip around them, and opens the staircase doors with his hips. There's a grand arpeggio of dry pops and creaks, and pale fireworks of dust.

The stairs are as difficult to climb as they are every year. It's why the local teens find other places to park it during the summer season. The stairwell air is humid and damp, whispers of mildew and rotting food remains. There are beer bottles and take-out boxes near the bottom floor, but the closer he struggles to the top, the landings are cleaner, and progressively more lonely.

He regrets not for the first time his inability to manipulate the dark portals; without them, he would have found somewhere else to spend time with his friends all those years ago. Sure, Xion might have gone along with it, but he could hear Roxas's lilting complaints in his head already, and hell would have iced itself over twice before somebody like _Isa_ would have ever--

“Axel?”

Lea looks up, shocked, and there's at once the warmth of gravity-defiant brown tufts of hair—tan fingers woven tightly around the pale hand of a pregnant woman with red hair.

There's a brief burst of white hot anger— _how dare you show your face here_ —that fades into practiced indifference.

“I mean—oh, Christ, that's not what I meant to call you—haha!” Sora laughs, peals of nervous decibels that chop themselves in half again and again. “I guess old habits die hard, huh?”

Now I remember why I haven't spoken to you in fifteen years, he thinks.

“ _Another_ bun in the oven?” he says; hip cocked in an impossible position, muscles screeching. “You trying to beat the Silver Fox and Naminé for most munchkins on the loose, or something? Shame, shame, shame!” Lea tuts, relaxing into the tired attitude he put down years ago. It's surprisingly comfortable; simmers wrongly in the right places. “I thought the first one was still happily on his potty training porcelain throne.”

There's a silence that lasts a beat too long before Kairi smiles, fingers fanning over the stomach spilling over her jeans. “He's eight, and very excited to be a big brother.”

They make small talk, and it stings in the pit of Lea's stomach how easy it is. The bitterness that once made the idea of the king and his pineapple princess with chakrams embedded in their skulls appealing is spirited away, replaced with a neutrality paying passive homage to the idea of time healing wounds.

“You meeting Roxas?” Sora's eyes are trained on the second bar in his gloved hand.

Lea places his free palm against his chest, feigning scandal. “Now, Sora, when have I ever been one to kiss and tell?”

Sora's abject horror is almost enough for Lea to clarify that Roxas's innocence remains securely intact, at least on the front of older red haired best friends. Lea waves with mock enthusiasm as Kairi smiles politely, tugging her boyfriend (or was it husband, now?) away down the stairs.

He thinks of the last time he saw Sora; his body broken across the ground, being healed fervently by all manner of allies Lea didn't know the names of. He remembered a teenaged Kairi staring sightlessly ahead, stiff in the supportive arms of a stonefaced Riku, and Namine, watching with her hands over her mouth, face glossed over in tears.

_He remembers a pile of broken bodies beneath filthy sheets with stray limbs and pieces of hair peeking out; strands of pink and black and blue—_

Lea doesn't think he'll ever see Sora and Kairi again, and he prays he's right.

“Now, then.”

The door is wedged open with a sliver of wood. Outside, the air hangs murky, damp and heady.

Lea takes a seat at the edge of the tower. He wobbles comically for a few seconds before he steadies again, taking a heaving bite from the sea-salt bar and grimacing as his teeth burn.

"I'll tell you three things you better be thankful for, and the first one is that you sure as hell don't gotta deal with brain freeze."

He allows a pause for rebuttal. The silence is undisturbed, save for the occasional staccato ticks of laughter wafting up from Tram Common. He takes another bite, and winces. "The second is that you didn't have to sacrifice every muscle in your ass just to climb up here. It's been twenty goddamn years I've been riding this phallus in the sky. The population is only getting fatter every year. You'd think they'd have invested in an elevator by now."

He lays the other bar next to him on the vacant stretch of concrete.

"Thirdly, you don't have to get a bunch of cards and letters from people telling you you're forty this month. I'll tell you, I don't remember getting this goddamn old. Everything hurts, Isa, everything you never dreamed could feel anything."

He thinks, it's been fifteen years, and the knowledge that he's known Isa dead longer than he knew Isa living hardens in the middle of his chest as a stone. Its easier now to spend his days without the last words Isa ever said to him playing click-track between his ears. He doesn't remember the way his hair smelled, or the exact way he held a coffee mug. He thinks it's year fifteen of solo trips to the top of the clocktower. He counts the number on one hand, a folding of every finger three times, considering the expanse of time that'd passed in detached fascination. Losing Isa was like waiting for the Twilight Town sun to set; a slow burn of days seeking closure, of nights staring sightlessly out at the midnight evening, waiting for the absolution of an ending that seemed at once close and miles upon miles away.

"Happy birthday, anyway," he says to no one in particular. He watches the blue of Isa's popsicle melt as it does every year, dripping down the concrete edge and bleeding dispassionately against the pavement.


End file.
